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due to the sad fact that humans are actually cheaper than machines for the most part, the only mining that's done by droids in societies that accept slavery are minerals that are radioactive

The problem with slave mining is that you can't put heavy machinery and explosives in the hands of the slaves and not expect them to use them against you. Mining without heavy machinery/explosives is far from economical: sure, it costs much less per day to run your mine, but you're getting a minute fraction of the ore you could get out *with* machinery. It'll take you something like ten to a hundred times longer to get the same volume of ore out (a big nono if you're on a schedule). Depending on your slave overhead (procurement, living expenses, *security* expenses, problems with PR/the law), you might actually end up paying more *per grams produced* (in the case of gold for example) with pure slave labor.

So, in our perticular case, the question becomes: does the Empire want to waste precious time, pushing back an urgent project just so they can save a few creds and punish a bunch of rebels they could just as easily have executed and have done? Sloor is thinking no, so there must be some other motive besides punishing people. Adverse conditions for droid/machinery mining came to mind, either from the ore itself or the planet's local conditions (EM interference, unusual heavy-wear conditions (repairing droids is pricey), ore requires delicate manipulation during extraction (intact crystals required for use), droids difficult to quietly smuggle/maintain at that location (for political reasons?), etc).

(I'm sort of "in context" right now myself, drilling to start a mine and all that, so this is closer to my heart than perhaps the story's RL accuracy warrants . Let me know if Sloor would just accept Empire slave mining at face value and he'll move on.)

The info you say is pretty much accurate from how I understand it, Binder. Thing is, there are likely tons of science fiction material in which humanoids were used over robots. It's just one of those things that seems to be a Star Wars thing. The Empire uses alien slaves.

Gotta like it when you take the thing off the rails, eh? I have a friend who says they played the first episode of this series. After I GM'd the first two encounters for her and few others, she said it was nothing like their first experience at all.

Just finished reading the thread: Excellent stuff guys! We're going to land this mother in *style*!

By the way, I want to appologize for my absence this last week. We had a major twist in the project on monday and had to close down the entire thing in four days flat. Been running around like a chicken with three heads and falling down to bed as soon as I stopped (a bed where I, of course, failed to sleep, what with so many things left to plan/arrange). Anyways, I should still have dropped you guys a line to let you know, hence the apology. A special "sorry" to Dr Simon as well, for sticking his character in limbo for a whole week! Sorry about that, man.